Relix > Issues

April – May

H.O.R.D.E.: 20 Years Later

On the 20th anniversary of The Great American H.O.R.D.E. Festival, Relix celebrates the traveling festival’s first year with an insightful retrospective, courtesy of executive editor Dean Budnick. Featuring Phish, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, The Aquarium Rescue Unit and Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, the inaugural tour brought together the jam scene’s brightest rising stars to create a sum greater than its parts for the eight dates that descended on the Eastern Seaboard. We invite you to venture back to a time when the Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler were bigger than Phish or Widespread Panic, when gas wasn’t $3 per gallon and when you could see five legendary bands for less than $15.

Punch Brothers: The Undiscovered Country

The Punch Brothers, founded just six years ago, have quickly become the country’s preeminent string band. Led by mandolinist Chris Thile and comprised of members such as banjoist Noam Pikelny and fiddler Gabe Witcher, the quintet took another progressive leap forward with their third album, Who’s Feeling Young Now? Produced by Jacquire King, the album finds the band experimenting, every so subtly, with effects on their instruments for the first time in their career. The results, as editor Josh Baron finds, are among the group’s best work yet.

Fairport Convention: Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Along with Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds, the English group Fairport Convention helped define folk rock in the ‘60s. Though it’s been more than 40 years since the release of their landmark album Liege & Lief — and more than 25 years since their official reunion—Fairport Convention continues to perform, record and even host their own multi-band festival in England. Nancy Dunham speaks to former and current members of the legendary band, such as Richard Thompson, as she traces the band’s evolution from a teenage acoustic jug band to a genre-defining powerhouse and finds out how this veteran act has “mellowed out” without slipping into nostalgia.

Air: Men on the Moon

The French electronic duo Air have made music-inspired by the moon for more than 15 years. So it wasn’t surprising that the hip Parisian twosome jumped at the opportunity to create an original score to the newly restored 1902 silent film Le Voyage dans la Lune. But Air principals Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel were so moved by the project that they used their short film score as a springboard for an entire album of new, Lune-themed material. Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman caught up with Air and their latest collaborators while in New York and finds out how the utterly modern duo helped bring a century-old film back to life.